The state Attorney General's office has filed a bar complaint against a Sequim lawyer who has filed a raft of lawsuits making baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in Washington.
The complaint to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel takes aim at attorney Virginia Shogren for a lawsuit against Gov. Jay Inslee that was recently rejected as "frivolous" by the state Supreme Court.
Shogren represented the Washington Election Integrity Coalition United in the Inslee lawsuit, which alleged widespread registration of noncitizens. The state Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit as without legal merit and last month ordered Shogren and the coalition to pay more than $28,000 in legal penalties.
The bar complaint, signed by Solicitor General Noah Purcell, accuses Shogren of violating professional conduct rules when she "advanced frivolous legal arguments and made allegations of voter fraud with no basis in fact."
The complaint cited claims by Shogren that her client had identified 50,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the state, without providing any basis or methodology for those assertions. A "casual check" of a sample of alleged noncitizens the coalition claimed had voted in 2020 showed the information was "not reliable," Purcell wrote. For example, he wrote, one voter identified by the group had tweeted about becoming a naturalized citizen in 2019.
"Unfounded and baseless allegations, like those made by Ms. Shogren have the predictable effect of undermining the public's faith...
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